Rear View Mirror 4/16/12

Rear View Mirror is your look back at the week in racing in
the world of Forza Motorsport and real life. This last weekend was full of all
types of racing and the action was constant. At one point I was flipping
between two races and DVRing another. There were surprises and mistakes and a
few drivers broke through the mire of previous performances. So, let’s get to
it!

American Le Mans
Series at Long Beach

After what seemed like forever, the ALMS series resumed at
Long Beach in what turned out to be a very exciting event. The tight turns and
close-quartered track provided limited passing areas in this city course along
the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

The Turn 10 community team enjoyed the race and hosted our
second Turn 10 Track Day, where we hung out on our Facebook
page, chatted with several hundred Forza
fans (despite a few freezing chat issues), and gave away some unicorns. Thanks
for everyone’s patience during the technical delays and thanks to everyone for
joining us; I had fun hanging out with you.

Community photo mode contest favorite from TheSuperstar801

The Muscle Milk HPD ARX-03a Driven by Lucas Luhr and Klaus
Graf took the overall win, and won the Michelin Green X Challenge for being fast
and efficient. They battled with the #16 Dyson car in the beginning of the race
and overtook them, then fell 15 seconds behind after their second pit stop.
Klaus Graf retook the lead and pushed the Honda to be over 40 seconds ahead of
second place by the finish.

In Prototype Challenge, the Muscle Milk took a hard-fought
second, giving them their first double-podium finish ever. First was taken by
CORE Autosport in the ORECA FLM09 driven by Alexander Popow and Ryan Dalziel.
This was their second win of the series and second pole and win combination in
as many years at Long Beach. Congratulations to the CORE team and a happy 30th
birthday to Dalziel.

After nearly avoiding a first-lap pile up, that left its
sister car the #3 Corvette hoodless and battered, the #4 Corvette took the GT
win. The #4 Compuware Corvette driven by Tommy Milner and Oliver Gavin fought
for first place with the #1 Tequila Patron Ferrari and the #57 BMW of Dirk
Mueller, all three held the lead for different periods of the race. The victory
was Corvette’s first at Long Beach and their forth since entering GT1.

With five classes and 33 cars running, ALMS racing is a lot
to pay attention to. What was the high point of the race for you? Discuss it in
the RVM thread. For all the
race results among the five classes click
here.

Community photo mode contest favorite from Kesselring1987

Formula 1 Chinese
Grand Prix

Mercedes earned a breakthrough win in Shanghai at the
Chinese Grand Prix, the manufacturer’s first since winning the Italian Grand
Prix at Monza in 1955. And a dominating win it was, with Nico Rosberg holding
the pole and blasting into a lead that he never gave up throughout the full 56 laps.
At the start, teammate Michael Schumacher was right behind Rosberg and held off
the pack just enough to let Rosberg slip away unimpeded. Schumacher was driving
strongly and would have been a likely second until a wheel was poorly attached
in a pit stop, taking him out of the race. The team was fined as well for an
unsafe release from pit lane. Another very unfortunate incident for Michael.

While never coming near the leader, McLaren posted a second
and third place finish. Jenson Button was delayed in his final pit stop with an
exceedingly long rear wheel change. Due to a gearbox change, Lewis Hamilton had
to fight from a seventh place grid start. McLaren currently leads the
constructor’s class in points.

Red Bull has yet to win this year but they are not short on
providing excitement. Mark Webber did a massive wheelie in his RB8 off of the
turn 13 curb. Near the end of the race, Webber and Vettel battled for position
as if they were hated rivals instead of teammates. Truly awesome
competitiveness.

Overall, the race was incident-free, with only Michael
Schumacher retiring. The Shanghai course was very fast and includes the highest
G-forces in F1, as cars brake from more than 200 mph for the turn 14 hairpin.
Next week’s race in Bahrain
will be even faster with Sakhir’s three ultra-long straightaways.

Do you think Mercedes has an unfair advantage with its
double DRS system? The FIA has now deemed it legal, and during qualifying it
may provide a distinct advantage. Discuss it in the RVM thread.

Community photo mode contest favorite from RaCiiNG PeNgUiN

Grand Prix of Long
Beach

What a weekend for Long Beach, ending with the IndyCar race
on Sunday. The 84-lap race was full of competition, destruction, and another
come-from-behind win for Will Power and his Verizon #12 Chevy-powered Penske
car. After coming from ninth in the previous race at Barber to win, Power
worked his way to the win from 12th on the grid at Long Beach, due
to a penalty suffered by all the Chevy teams from an unscheduled engine swap. This
was Team Penske’s first win at Long Beach and their third of the season. Simon
Pagenaud in the #77 Honda, took a close second and was delivering astounding
lap times in his attempt to catch Power. After the race he said, “One more lap,
man…” James Hinchcliffe in the GoDaddy.com #27 took third.

The race started off with rookie Josef Newgarden blowing the
first turn--as well as his pole position--and ending up in the tires. Numerous
other incidents lead to many caution laps. Marco Andretti’s car got airborne
and nearly flipped after riding up on the rear-wheel of Graham Rahal’s car. Andretti’s
blamed Rahal for chopping into him at the corner; Rahal claimed Andretti wasn’t
going to make the corner anyway. On the last lap there was a multi-car, track
blocking set of spinouts at the hairpin that forced winner Will Power to end
his victory lap mid-track and walk back to the paddock. Several cars did not
finish as a result.

Check out these race highlights of this
exciting end to an exciting race, closing an awesome racing weekend in Long
Beach.

Community photo mode contest favorite from conod

NASCAR Samsung Mobile
500 at Fort Worth, TX

In a race that set records for highest average speed
(160.577 mph), fewest cautions (two), and least number of caution laps (10),
Hendrick Motorsports put four cars in the top ten, but missed out on what would
have been their 200th victory.

Sprint Cup points leader Greg Biffle took the win in the 3M Filtrete
#16 Ford. After taking the lead in lap 304 from Hendricks driver
Jimmie Johnson, Biffle held on to break his 49-race winless streak. Johnson in
the Lowes #48 Chevrolet, lead the race a total of 156 laps and put his car
into the fence trying to get the lead back from Biffle. Johnson complained of
slower drivers not giving him the respect he felt he deserved as race leader as
a contributing factor to Biffle’s ability to pass him and take the victory.
Jimmie settled for second and Mark Martin in the Aarons #55 Toyota took third.

Hendricks’ newest and most trouble-plagued driver Kasey
Kahne finally put together a top ten finish, achieving seventh, despite a
near-miss in pit row. Kahne has struggled with accidents and misfortune thus
far and hopes to repeat his much-improved Fort Worth performance going forward.

The elusive 200th Hendricks team victory has been
looming for twelve races now, and the box of hats has been toted from race to
race. It is inevitable that the most successful modern era race team will get
what’s coming to them, but when continues to be the question. What do you think
it is going to take for this team reach this historic goal? Discuss it in the
RVM thread.

Community photo mode contest favorite from Alvar le Swag

Virtual Motorsports
Online Racing Series

While the weekend was packed with real-world racing, the
action in the Forza world never slows down. This week, we are covering the racing
series’ organized by Virtual-Motorsports.com
and proprietor Ryan Ware, GT VVVHellbr1ng3r.
Virtual–Motorsports.com is one of the busiest private racing sites, with 859
members. They run up to six series a week and cater to many time zones and all
skill levels. There is always a racing event coming up, so check them out and
get into the Forza 4 online racing action. They produce a weekly
newsletter covering the series’ winners as well as video highlights and a
weekly “Guess the Car” competition.

Last week the VM Stockhatch Series saw its seventh race,
full of small stock FWD hatchbacks, hosted at Silverstone. The race was 25
laps with the grid slotted according to the top six lap qualifiers. There were
three rooms making up the event, in room one the win went to #321 VVV Axiom, room two saw #64 EZT bobwithajob, take first, and in room
three #628 xSTRACERx was victorious.

In the VM NASCAR series, drivers took their purpose-built
stock cars to Sunset Speedway (reverse) for their second trip here in the season.
The fifth race of the series was a 50-lap race and was conducted among three
rooms. Taking first in room one was top qualifier, and fastest lap setter, #984
EZT ShotgunZ. Room two saw #25 inviseco, collect first place and in
room three, American driver #120 EZT o
solleft, was first.

The final race of the eight race VM Classics series held
court for 100 different spec-built cars from the 1950s to the 1990s. The 28-lap
race was run at Road Atlanta in four rooms. Room one winner was the top
qualifier, fastest lapper, and favorite, #599 V12 NiKroX, in his Lancia Delta. In room two, #866 TrooperR6, took the win in a BMW 2002
Turbo. American driver, #88 XVM Casper24,
took the win in his Ford Mustang Boss 429, and in room four, #448 befunged, placed first in his Honda CRX
SiR.

The winner of the VM Classics series was British #440 VVV Amarth and his 1970 Dodge Coronet
Super Bee, despite not participating in the final race. Congratulations to VVV
Amarth and to all the race winners.

Our second GWD was last Thursday, April 12. Well, it was the
second since I’ve been here. It was a blast, and we all enjoyed playing with
the community. Here are a few choice quotes from Fred, Javier and Brian.

From Fred—“The downfall
of full damage soccer is that when your car gets flipped over, you are forever
stuck in that position until someone flips you over or a goal is scored. Lots
of people were surprised during that first minute of action, no one seemed to
check the settings so they all went full bore and wrecked themselves on that
first faceoff, made for a couple easy goals by me. There was also was one memorable
goal by a blue car who, off the faceoff hit, took the ball right between two
red cars and scored a quick goal. Well done FEMX ducati 999!”

From Jav—“Most of
my time was spent hopping around rooms, so my memorable moments would be,
surprising random people. There were lots of bacon-themed rooms, which turned
into bacon and egg rooms. I also held a Fujimi Kaido Hill climb with -75%
traction, it was really funny. Sixteen R1 cars that could barely make it up the
first hill. Chat was great, in fact, it was one of our biggest chats to date
and we also sent a GWD record for highest unicorns gifted by us (500+).”

From Brian- “As is
my norm, my GWD experience was 80% Circuit racing, 20% Multi-Class racing, and
10% Drifting. Wait… that’s like 110 percent. Anyway, as always the racing was
fun (if a bit violent this time around—you guys really want those unicorns!) My
favorite moment? When I busted out the Country Squire for a race at
Mugello—only to find out too late that the car still had an A-class drag tune
on it, which made turning a disaster. That said, I was murder down the long
front straight…”

For my part, I did Circuit Racing with hybrids and raced my
utterly silent Nissan Leaf. Overall, I think everyone enjoyed the “Sounds of Silence.” We had some extremely clean racing and those
that were racing Tesla’s hardly knew they were in a hybrid, except for the lack
of shifting and the blatant sound of squealing tires.

Our next GWD will be next week, check the Week in Review on
Friday for the exact time. I look forward to racing with you again. Vote for
what track you would like to race with me on in the RVM thread.